Your latest bike project?

[anomad]

@hozn 164987 wrote:

Thanks! – replaced with a Tapatalk upload.

Very nice.

[hozn]

Picked this out of a neighbor’s trash. The components are pretty rough. While my 4yo already has an Isla to use for next spring, I think I am gonna turn this into another kid project bike since I don’t have any other projects planned for the winter.

I am going to try to keep the budget down on this one. Wheels really mess with the budget.

So, just using the frame, possibly the headset and probably the saddle. Right now I am thinking:
– strip paint, sand/polish and use an auto-wheel clear coat rattle can for a raw aluminum look.
– ebay carbon fork. $80-110. Lots of 20″ forks, but most aren’t really suspension corrected, so wondering if it will mess with geo too much. But the RST fork is a boat anchor.
– a2z adapter again for disc brake. Found one for $25.
– Shimano hydro disc brakes, probably lower-end. Hoping to get a set for sub $50.
– still more research needed on rims/hubs for the wheels. Tubeless is strongly desired (hopefully the 2.1″ Kenda SB8 tires can also be run tubeless).

[jabberwocky]

First new bike in several years:

The frame came up for sale on the FB marketplace group and it was priced right and my size, so I couldn’t resist. Motobecane Century Ti, built with Ultegra 8000 and a motley collection of other parts. I moved out to Leesburg a month ago and wanted something to handle the unpaved roads out here better than my road bike.

[hozn]

@jabberwocky 167189 wrote:

First new bike in several years:

The frame came up for sale on the FB marketplace group and it was priced right and my size, so I couldn’t resist. Motobecane Century Ti, built with Ultegra 8000 and a motley collection of other parts. I moved out to Leesburg a month ago and wanted something to handle the unpaved roads out here better than my road bike.

Nice! We need bigger/zoomed-in bike pics! All that farmland countryside is detracting from the bike photo

[Tania]

2018 Transition Patrol. It’s not quite ready (cables need to cut) but I’m stoked.

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[Sunyata]

@Tania 167313 wrote:

2018 Transition Patrol. It’s not quite ready (cables need to cut) but I’m stoked.

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YES! You are going to own ALL of the rocks.

You need to be taller so I can borrow your bikes. 😎

[Tania]

@Sunyata 167342 wrote:

YES! You are going to own ALL of the rocks.

You need to be taller so I can borrow your bikes. 😎

It was fun to build – came as a bare frame (with shock) and then rest was in little boxes. We had to do all the cable routing, cut the steerer tube, press the headset etc. I helped as much as I could but mostly I hovered.

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[hozn]

@hozn 167088 wrote:

Picked this out of a neighbor’s trash. The components are pretty rough. While my 4yo already has an Isla to use for next spring, I think I am gonna turn this into another kid project bike since I don’t have any other projects planned for the winter.

I am going to try to keep the budget down on this one. Wheels really mess with the budget.

So, just using the frame, possibly the headset and probably the saddle. Right now I am thinking:
– strip paint, sand/polish and use an auto-wheel clear coat rattle can for a raw aluminum look.
– ebay carbon fork. $80-110. Lots of 20″ forks, but most aren’t really suspension corrected, so wondering if it will mess with geo too much. But the RST fork is a boat anchor.
– a2z adapter again for disc brake. Found one for $25.
– Shimano hydro disc brakes, probably lower-end. Hoping to get a set for sub $50.
– still more research needed on rims/hubs for the wheels. Tubeless is strongly desired (hopefully the 2.1″ Kenda SB8 tires can also be run tubeless).

Thanks to Vicegrip’s generous help, this frame is looking pretty good.

– removed the kickstand plate
– removed brake bosses
– replaced missing rivnut for bottle cage
– tapped the a2z disc brake adapter and bolted that through the rack/fender mounts.

I am considering having this powder coated after all. Right now the plan is gold for a “Thor” theme (red, gold, silver). Mjölnir badging on the down tube. That may not still be my son’s favorite character/role model once he’s big enough to ride this, though.

So far he biggest “oops” was not measuring the rear spacing. I assumed 135 since it is kinda mtb-like, but it is 130. Luckily 130mm disc hubs are on clearance from Bdop (Novatec).

I’m planning to do a 16h paired-spoke lacing for the wheels (32h rims and hubs — really hard to find 20″ rims with less than 32h). That should be more than enough for this little rider and look kinda cool. I’ve already ordered custom Laser spokes, but might go crazy and use titanium or gold-colored spokes for lead spokes.

[drevil]

@hozn 168023 wrote:

Thanks to Vicegrip’s generous help, this frame is looking pretty good.

– removed the kickstand plate
– removed brake bosses
– replaced missing rivnut for bottle cage
– tapped the a2z disc brake adapter and bolted that through the rack/fender mounts.

…

All cool, but I especially like the disc brake adapter.

Vicegrip, you take orders for customized adapters? I have a ti frame that has no brake bosses (i.e., fixie) that I’ve always wanted to put on a disc rear wheel.

[hozn]

@drevil 168025 wrote:

All cool, but I especially like the disc brake adapter.

Vicegrip, you take orders for customized adapters? I have a ti frame that has no brake bosses (i.e., fixie) that I’ve always wanted to put on a disc rear wheel.

So that adapter is the A2Z DM-UNI (http://www.a2zcomponents.com/02products_04adapter_01.html), but mounted here without the front plate (not an original idea; others have done this too). On this particular frame/dropout using the rack+fender eyelets worked out great (lined up with the aluminum backplate of the adapter, which Vicegrip helped me [i.e. let me watch & learn] tap out with an M5x0.8 and then drilled out the rack/fender threads so we could bolt through from the outside).

[n18]

@drevil 168025 wrote:

All cool, but I especially like the disc brake adapter.

Vicegrip, you take orders for customized adapters? I have a ti frame that has no brake bosses (i.e., fixie) that I’ve always wanted to put on a disc rear wheel.

Here is a disk brake adapter just in case A2Z DM-UNI adapter doesn’t fit:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HFWAMEA/

And for those who want to convert from V-Brakes to disk, here is a brake caliper option designed just long enough for bikes that use V-Brakes, but the triangle needs to be straight from fender mount to the wheel’s axle. Unfortunately for me, my rear triangle is curved both horizontally and vertically, so I can’t use caliper brakes, and there is no room for rotors, so no disk brakes either.

[hozn]

Little wheels!

These are a set of 359-ETRTO wheels (aka the folding bike “16-inch” size). I’m going to use these first on the 20″ bike and transition to the 406 etrto (BMX 20″) a little later.

This was interesting, because using 16h rims with 32h hubs requires 3 different spoke lengths. I’m not sure I calculated it exactly right, but they seem to be within length tolerance.

(Haven’t actually tensioned these yet.)

[hozn]

Bigger wheels!

These are the 20″ (406) wheels. Also not tensioned yet. These were fun/intereting because of the paired-spoke lacing pattern. In this case both rims and hubs were 32h, but I only used 16 spokes. Paired spokes keeps the spokes lined up correctly with the offset drilling of the rim (whereas skipping every other spoke would not).

I used 5mm plastic plugs to fill the unused holes.

None of these were original ideas. All worked out swimmingly.

[hozn]

I started a Google+ collection to track the project progress, which works better than this general-purpose forum thread. https://plus.google.com/collection/cGcPLE

[hozn]

@hozn 169699 wrote:

Little wheels!

These are a set of 359-ETRTO wheels (aka the folding bike “16-inch” size). I’m going to use these first on the 20″ bike and transition to the 406 etrto (BMX 20″) a little later.

Every now and then an idea that seems clever at the time turns out to be really dumb. This is an example.

The idea of using 359-ETRTO tires made sense as an in-between step for the 20″ bike. HOWEVER, I should have done a little measuring and a little more research on tire availability. The largest affordable tires were the Comets and they are still only like 32mm. This has the bike riding *way* too low — the crankarms/pedals would be very close to the ground just riding in a straight line, not to mention turning …

I rather doubt anyone out there is thinking right now “if only I had some disc-brake, 130QR, 359 wheels”, so I’ll figure out something else to do with the parts. Too bad about the gold spokes …. ! Lesson learned: when you’re going rogue, you might want to consider compatibility with all of the frame’s dimensions.

[Author]

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